BT12 Workshop 34 – Cognitive-Behavioral Techniques with Couples – Frank Dattilio, PhD, ABPP
This workshop focuses on the specific use of cognitive-behavioral strategies as an adjunct to the many treatment modalities of couples’ therapy. It offers a basic overview of the theories of cognitive-behavioral therapy, particularly as it applies to couples. Participants will learn firsthand techniques and strategies for working with difficult couples and how to integrate these strategies with their respective modes of treatment. The presentation is followed by a videotape that demonstrates the implementation of techniques and interventions.
This talk presents: 1) current information about porn, its users, and its impact on consumers and their relationships; 2) the common model of how porn use shapes sexual decision-making, and an alternative model that better matches people’s experiences; 3) an alternative to the “porn addiction” model for diagnosing and treating compulsive or impulsive behavior regarding porn.
Tired of having your income limited by one-to-one sessions? Recent changes in our culture and technology have created incredible opportunities for private practitioners. Casey Truffo will discuss how to leverage your time, extend your reach, and create multiple streams of therapy income with the new Private Practice Plus business model.
BT12 Workshop 36 – Transforming Negative States: A Workshop in Generative Psychotherapy – Stephen Gilligan, PhD
This workshop presents the Ericksonian and Self-Relations Psychotherapy approach to human states of suffering: depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, etc. This practical and positive approach assumes that each core human experience has equivalent potential to be positive or negative, depending on the human relationship to it; and thus focuses on how problems may be transformed to resources by skillful human connection. Multiple techniques and examples for will be given, along with an exercise and demonstration.
Infidelity generally points out flaws in a relationship, and the revelation of an affair often triggers a crisis of trust and connection. We’ll examine the benefits and the costs of truth-telling and transparency, how couples can rebuild trust and intimacy, and how affairs can actually stabilize a marriage and prevent its dissolution. In particular, we will focus on how couples can turn the crisis into an opportunity. Combining didactic material, case studies and video vignettes, we will lay out a nuanced and multicultural therapeutic approach for working with extramarital relations, fantasized or real, disclosed or shrouded in secrecy.
The purpose is to transpose office therapy into communal application. Personal change is fundamental to psychotherapy but life focus is its instrumentality, often overshadowed. These groups will prioritize it, seeking to portray life. The groups may be large and life-long. Dr Polster will provide conceptual innovations, representative exercises and live communal illustration.
Knowing how to elicit positive emotion even in couples steeped in intensely negative interactions is the key to providing the motivation for change. In this workshop, we’ll explore a variety of ways for creating “magical moments” in the therapy hour that offer a new template for couples, otherwise trapped in dysfunction, to allay repetitive cycles. You’ll learn how to use tools like focusing, sentence stems, doubling and directives to invite couples into new kinds of experience of connection. We’ll also examine the neurobiological principles that enable partners to expect and attract more positive experiences from each other.
BT12 Workshop 41 – Mating in Captivity: Reconciling Attachment, Security and Erotic Desire in Couples – Esther Perel, MA, LMFT
Based on Perel’s bestseller, Mating in Captivity, this bold take on intimacy and sex grapples with the obstacles and anxieties that arise when our quest for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion. We will tackle eroticism as a quality of aliveness and vitality in relationships extending far beyond mere sexuality, and consider how the need for secure attachment and closeness can co-exist with the quest for individuality and freedom.
BT12 Workshop 42 – Treating Anxious Children and Families: Brief, Successful and Fun – Lynn Lyons, MSW
Families dealing with anxiety are often locked into cognitive and behavioral patterns that are rigid, overwhelming, and controlling. This workshop provides tools and interventions to interrupt the predictable elements of anxiety, help parents shift out of their anxious behavior, and teach families a plan to handle the process of worry.
BT12 Workshop 43 – Stages of Change: Tailoring the Treatment Method and the Therapy Relationship to the Individual Client – John Norcross, PhD, ABPP
Backed by 30 years of research, this workshop provides demonstrably effective methods for adapting the treatment method and the therapy relationship to the patient’s stage of change. You will learn to rapidly assess the stages of change (precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance) and then to match processes of change specific to that stage. “Doing the right thing at the right time” is the key to efficient change. This workshop features focused lectures, clinical examples, practice exercises, interactive discussions, and participants’ own case material.